Modular Mill Vice

ZORO's eBay store has currently got these vices at half price, I've looked at them for a while but the price which fluctuates between £340 to £400 has put me off buying one, The price just dropped to £172 only on their eBay store, so I bought one half expecting to get a msg saying there had been a mistake and the order would be cancelled because it was so cheap, but no, it turned up today, eBay also had an 8x nectar points offer so got about 7 quid back making it £165 delivered, this offer is for the smallest 100mm size.

..tell us if it's good?

'Square' jaws and 'flat' base?

What're the other bits in the box?

Looks good, I would be very tempted if I hadn't recently bought an ARC Versatile. In my experience Zoro tend to be very expensive, I only buy things that are on sale when the prices come down to what you can buy the same things for elsewhere eg: Indexa PVM100 at ManoMano.

William.

The one on Mano Mano is from Zoro.

First impressions are good, the fit and finish is excellent, I'll make my own measurements when I can, the leaflet that came with it shows it has been manually checked off, not printed check marks like someone on here had with a mill they bought.

The contents listed also, the work stop is bit mehh, but easy enough to make something better.

As Jason says, the Mano listing is supplied by Zoro, generally I've not found Zoro to be that expensive, even at full price it was the cheapest available the next Modular vice up price wise was about £420 for the 100mm version, so still a good bit cheaper.

Just had to place an order on Zoro for work & had a look at this vice on the main site - this particular vice is currently £274.99 + Vat there. No special offer to account holders then !

Seems like a lot of overall length for it's capacity - 270mm overall length & 100 opening. What machine are you using it on ? It would have to go "long ways" on my FB2 clone table - "normal" orientation would interfere with the column on one side of the table & hang over the handwheel on the other.

Nigel B.

That's what I said in the original post, it is full price on their website and half price in their eBay shop, which is why I thought it might be a mistake being so cheap.

A few similar size vices for comparison

Modular 270mm length 100mm opening

Versatile 330mm length 120mm opening

Versatile SG 305mm length 120mm opening

So the Versatile is 60mm longer with 20mm extra opening, the Versatile SG 35mm longer with 20mm extra opening, I don't really see anything that out of the ordinary regarding total length to capacity?

In fact the total length is more similar to the 80mm jaw Versatile which is 252mm length with a jaw opening of 76mm.

I think most of us have some of the vice hanging off the front of the table.

Only thing length wise is the rear jaw may be a bit wider than some which moves your working area towards you or the vice has to hang off the back of the table a bit more which depending on machine could limit Y movement if the column is close.

Yes, the fixed jaw body is a bit wider, I'd imagine the vice gets cranked down extremely tight when used in CNC machines commercially so needs to be a bit more solid there.

It does give a bit more Z axis space, the Modular being 35mm high on the work surface face, the Versatile SG being 63mm high on the work surface face.